I am only familiar with the wikipedia article on Journey to the West, but from what I can tell, the game's relationship to that story is mostly just borrowing a few of the more well-known motifs. Which is fine. I have no problem with that. I was just disappointed that a game that had done such a good job of being understated and letting things be implied rather than explicitly spoken suddenly decided to go into FULL EXPOSITION MODE at the last moment and explain away the universe in an incredibly uninteresting way. Honestly, the ending could have been stuck on any Standard Sci-fi Video Game, it had so little to do with what came before it.

Finished this today. In general, it was quite good. I loved the character dynamic, and the gameplay was "fine." Nothing memorable, but nothing ruinous, either. For all this game does well, though, there is one thing about Enslaved that gets my goat.
Enslaved should be the textbook example of How Not To End a Video Game.
After 13 chapters that essentially did everything they needed to, chapter 14 shows up and is just sort of there. "We need some kind of dramatic ending sequence," you can hear some producer say five weeks this game is supposed to be finished. "How about a second giant robot shows up and fights the giant robot you're in!"
"Well, ok," says the imaginary game designer, "I guess we can do that. Can it at least be a giant scorpion, though? We've kind of been going for an animal theme."
"Yeah, yeah, sure, as long as that Monkey dude says 'I will end you' right before the finish or something like that. They kids, they love that. Oh, and make sure you squeeze in a Dramatic Sacrifice by Beloved Secondary Character. People go apeshit for that. And it really drives home the gravitas, you know?"
Then, after a mostly-meaningless fight between you and the scorpion robot, the Epilogue pops up and suddenly control of the game seems to have been wrenched away and given to Very Pleased With Himself Lead Writer.
"You see, " begins the Lead Writer, "I've been very restrained about explaining the context behind my post-apolocalyptic setting here, wouldn't you agree? Sure, an Empire State Building here, some Images of Life Before there, etc., but I've resisted the urge to write reams and reams of exposition where I detail everything that has ever happened. Isn't that clever of me?"
"I suppose so," I say out loud, while my wife wonders who I'm talking to.
"And now that you've admired all my careful restraint and finished the game, wouldn't you like me to unleash all that exposition I've been holding back?" continues the Lead Writer.
"Actually, I'd be much more interested in seeing what Trip and Monk--" is as much as I'm able to get out before my imaginary writer takes the reins again.
"YOU SEE," says Lead Writer, "the slaves weren't really slaves at all! Because it's a simulation! The mechs force the humans to live fake 20th century lives in a computer simulation! What a clever twist, don't you think?"
"Isn't that just...I mean, you've seen the movie The Matrix, right?"
There is no reply. The epilogue ends, a Frenchie song plays over the credit sequence and I am unceremoniously dumped back at the main menu.
</scene>
But seriously folks, aside from that bit of the game, Enslaved was great.

I think that's the biggest difference between BG and PoE. It's hard to remember now, because it has embedded itself so firmly in our consciousness as an "epic" RPG, but Baldur's Gate (especially the first one) was almost more comedy than drama. If you read all the flavor text, talked to all the characters, etc., then it felt like a downright parody of RPG tropes. The journal entries, in particular, were written in this first-person sarcastic voice. BG2 tuned this way down and generally took itself a lot more seriously (like, moody teenager seriously, to be honest.)
I don't particularly mind the change -- PoE is much more, um, "Obsidian"-feeling than Bioware-feeling -- but I can see how some would.

Nitpick: Although some Black Isle folks may have been involved, Obsidian didn't even exist at the time of Baldur's Gate 2. It was Bioware's baby.
But I agree: Kotor 2, Neverwinter Nights 2 (and especially the expansions) and even New Vegas ("Fallout3 2") were significant departures and improvements from their predecessors once you ignore the bugs.

The "never" statements are indeed a few years old, but as recently as last year they were still insisting they had no plans for developing original games for mobile. My guess is, once the mobile money starts pouring in, porting old games to smartphones will be too hard to resist. So when they say they're not doing ports, what they really mean is they're not doing ports this year.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/17/nintendo-mobile-iwata/

I'm just totally bummed out about this, for a couple of reasons.
One, it says to me that the writing is on the wall for home video game consoles and handhelds.
Two, it means Nintendo is backing out of an assurance they made really only a year or two ago that this would never, ever happen over Iwata's dead body. If they're already walking that statement back, it means they're losing control of their own business niche to a degree no one's anticipated. It means the Wii U isn't just another a GameCube - a small failure before the next big comeback - but that Nintendo is actually struggling to find a direction for the company to go in.
I'm usually the first to express skepticism at Nintendo's naysayers, but nothing about this situation looks good.

Great episode! Maybe you guys play a lot more, or maybe you're just smarter than me, but you always notice connections between the cards and potential plays that never occur to me. It's really interesting to hear your take on the new IDs - I was convinced out of the gate that Argus Security would be super strong, but now I'm convinced it's mediocre. I just can't trust myself!

Man, Grim Fandangooooooo
I was actually planning on NOT getting this game because I've played it so many times before that I feel like I've memorized huge chunks of dialogue and puzzles that would make replaying it not worth it.
But listening to you guys complain about it is making want to go through it all over again!

I'm into the Los Angeles portion of the game now (that shouldn't be a spoiler, I think, since it's in the marketing materials.) It definitely gets more talky and less shooty as it goes on, but the game is seriously missing some narrative thrust. The major quest of Act 1 is
and the major quest of Act 2 seems to be
. The individual areas are interesting, and have some reasonably well-told small stories within the universe, but the overall narrative of the game does nothing to push you forward. It's not like good RPGs, where I feel like I'm betraying the mission a bit when I go off and do sidequests, it's more like they counted on their players to be so interested in sidequests that they don't bother giving you a reason to do anything, other than "oh, the next section is sort of that way."
I'm still having fun with it, and I appreciate their commitment to the world and the reactivity of your decisions. It just feels sometimes like they set up an interesting world with interesting characters and then left any actual story-telling plot work to the player's imagination.